• Welcome to PurpleFlock! Be sure to sign up here so that you can chat with your fellow Ravens fans.

Around the NFL: News and Rumors

Militant X 1

Ravens Ring of Honor

JO_75

Hall of Famer
It's one thing to defend your hire but.... this is quite ridiculous. Derek Carr needs to seek a trade or if he's serious about only wanting to play for the Raiders, pull a Barry Sanders and retire after this season.

 

RavensMania

Staff Member
Administrator
It's one thing to defend your hire but.... this is quite ridiculous. Derek Carr needs to seek a trade or if he's serious about only wanting to play for the Raiders, pull a Barry Sanders and retire after this season.


oh well, guess BB won't be getting his OC for the remainder of the season after all.
 

Ellicottraven

Ravens Ring of Honor

Same reason Lamar may not get his fully guaranteed money from the Ravens. It is hard to put up 200-250M in escrow, especially if an owner likes his team to generate its own revenues to manage its costs. Also, very hard for billionaires that have large firms/entities and just have a net worth of several billion based on valuation. Sure, they can take loans, but that interest can add up very soon, especially for such large sums. When they extend Lamar, if Bisciotti has to take a loan to come up with the escrow, he has to include the cost of that guaranteed money into Lamar's salary to figure out how much he is paying Lamar. So, it is an uphill battle for the Ravens to pay Lamar a fully guaranteed contract regardless of its fairness or how worthy Lamar is to get that money. I'm hoping they are able to come up with a compromise where all parties are happy and Lamar stays a Raven for life.
 

rmcjacket23

Ravens Ring of Honor

Same reason Lamar may not get his fully guaranteed money from the Ravens. It is hard to put up 200-250M in escrow, especially if an owner likes his team to generate its own revenues to manage its costs. Also, very hard for billionaires that have large firms/entities and just have a net worth of several billion based on valuation. Sure, they can take loans, but that interest can add up very soon, especially for such large sums. When they extend Lamar, if Bisciotti has to take a loan to come up with the escrow, he has to include the cost of that guaranteed money into Lamar's salary to figure out how much he is paying Lamar. So, it is an uphill battle for the Ravens to pay Lamar a fully guaranteed contract regardless of its fairness or how worthy Lamar is to get that money. I'm hoping they are able to come up with a compromise where all parties are happy and Lamar stays a Raven for life.
So two things I'd say on this:
1. I'm not sure its so much about an inability to fire McDaniels because they can't pay him as it is the inability (or lack of desire) to pay 3 HC's at once, since that's likely what they'd be doing. Nobody knows what the details of Gruden's termination was, but I can guarantee he wouldn't have resigned and forfeited the remaining $60M on his deal. My guess is he and the Raiders came up with some sort of hefty settlement, and one that I'm sure the Raiders will be deferring over a period of time.
So as an Owner, I would want nothing to do with paying Gruden, paying McDaniels for several years, and then hiring somebody else. If they did go that route, the next person they hire would probably be about as cheap as they come. Not like Davis is going to pay Gruden, McDaniels, and like a Sean Payton, simultaneously.

Plus, I'm also just not generally a fan of this "fire a HC after one season" stuff.

2. I've said before, but I don't really buy the "they can't afford the escrow thing". For starters, I'm not entirely unsure that, if this really became an issue, the NFL and/or NFLPA (I honestly don't even know if this is a collectively bargained rule or not) would just drop the escrow requirement or % all together.
Second, its not like they would need a loan for the entire amount.
For example, back in 2020, we extended both Stanley and Marlon in a calendar year. The totality of those two contracts, in guaranteed-at-signing $, was over $100M. I don't recall hearing any issues with the Ravens coming up with that money for escrow. And that's just two players. I'm sure there were other signings that year that would have increased that total.

Not to mention that these teams routinely finance stadium improvements on the regular, and many of those costs tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. I seriously doubt they're all 100% funded via operating cash.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that many of these franchises are leveraged to the hills. I can look at the Green Bay Packers balance sheet from 2022 and they have $112M in debt that is unrelated to compensation. They also have $623M in cash equivalents/investments, meaning they don't have to take on debt, but they choose to.

And said Balance Sheet is also a pretty good indicator of how a normal company would run. Pretty much any mid-to-large size company you've heard of carries debt. And many of them actually do have the liquidity to pay off that debt if they wanted to, but they choose not to. The reason is because they can purchase things with cash that yield greater outcomes than the interest on the debt. Most of the companies have investment portfolios. They're in bonds, equities, etc. NFL teams wouldn't be any different.

So like yeah, it COULD be a problem, but I think fans should stop pretending like its a wide-scale problem that will impact a lot of teams. There's means to finance just about anything you want. It's simply a question of whether you want to or not.
 

Ellicottraven

Ravens Ring of Honor
So two things I'd say on this:
1. I'm not sure its so much about an inability to fire McDaniels because they can't pay him as it is the inability (or lack of desire) to pay 3 HC's at once, since that's likely what they'd be doing. Nobody knows what the details of Gruden's termination was, but I can guarantee he wouldn't have resigned and forfeited the remaining $60M on his deal. My guess is he and the Raiders came up with some sort of hefty settlement, and one that I'm sure the Raiders will be deferring over a period of time.
So as an Owner, I would want nothing to do with paying Gruden, paying McDaniels for several years, and then hiring somebody else. If they did go that route, the next person they hire would probably be about as cheap as they come. Not like Davis is going to pay Gruden, McDaniels, and like a Sean Payton, simultaneously.

Plus, I'm also just not generally a fan of this "fire a HC after one season" stuff.

2. I've said before, but I don't really buy the "they can't afford the escrow thing". For starters, I'm not entirely unsure that, if this really became an issue, the NFL and/or NFLPA (I honestly don't even know if this is a collectively bargained rule or not) would just drop the escrow requirement or % all together.
Second, its not like they would need a loan for the entire amount.
For example, back in 2020, we extended both Stanley and Marlon in a calendar year. The totality of those two contracts, in guaranteed-at-signing $, was over $100M. I don't recall hearing any issues with the Ravens coming up with that money for escrow. And that's just two players. I'm sure there were other signings that year that would have increased that total.

Not to mention that these teams routinely finance stadium improvements on the regular, and many of those costs tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. I seriously doubt they're all 100% funded via operating cash.

It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to find out that many of these franchises are leveraged to the hills. I can look at the Green Bay Packers balance sheet from 2022 and they have $112M in debt that is unrelated to compensation. They also have $623M in cash equivalents/investments, meaning they don't have to take on debt, but they choose to.

And said Balance Sheet is also a pretty good indicator of how a normal company would run. Pretty much any mid-to-large size company you've heard of carries debt. And many of them actually do have the liquidity to pay off that debt if they wanted to, but they choose not to. The reason is because they can purchase things with cash that yield greater outcomes than the interest on the debt. Most of the companies have investment portfolios. They're in bonds, equities, etc. NFL teams wouldn't be any different.

So like yeah, it COULD be a problem, but I think fans should stop pretending like its a wide-scale problem that will impact a lot of teams. There's means to finance just about anything you want. It's simply a question of whether you want to or not.
Hey, @rmcjacket23 I had my fingers crossed that you'd stop at one thing, but nooooo, sirry Bob, you had to go with 'two'!!
 
Top